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Hey, folks! About time I continued writing……or rather continued my occasional writing here on WordPress. I’m finishing my gulab jamoon and rubbing the grease on my jeans as I write this. So, we all grow up and I did too. I’m a surly, pain-in-the-ass Indian teenager of fifteen. I’ll tell you why. (Not the teenager part but the words which came before it part)

Its Diwali now and they are bursting crackers like crazy. Its all bang bang boom bang out here. I’ m in my room, holed up like a rat on my couch and typing on my laptop(Yeah, I completed that jamoon, don’t worry). The thing is my dad is so very annoyed with me because I yanked his ear off the whole time about the environmental pollution that crackers cause when we went down the flight of stairs with a box of flowerpots. I actually went down with him for that very reason but ended up bursting a whole box of crackers myself. It was awesome.

The thing is, three years back, I would have not been very different from the bunch of scrawny kids down there, excited and jumping up and down and screaming diwali. I would have been elated to see the box of crackers hiding under the bed, brought weeks ago, ready for this day. I would take a peek everyday for the weeks leading up to diwali, just so childishly grinning when my dad would open the complex packaging for me just to touch and see those crackers. New dresses, crackers, sweets, gifts, the little Pooja would be overwhelmed.

I wonder what changed.

Wonder how I changed from the childish, carefree kid to the serious, brooding teenager. The metamorphosis shocks me now when I look back. Its like somebody reached out and killed the child inside me, only to be replaced by an advanced version I sometimes hate. Don’t take me wrong, I like the way I am now. I mean what is the point of setting off explosives at random?

Only there is no point…we do it for happiness. I regret that happiness is replaced by Ellie Goudling songs and living in my own bubble. Again, not really. I think Diwali is silly and not worth the time we spend over it.

Sometimes, I wonder whether I grew up too soon and it’s wrong to be glad. That I should be out there in the streets, wearing glittery dresses and celebrating instead of being scrunched up here. That being mature sometimes is not the way we behave, but the way we are. Feel like sometimes the way I am is not just immature but also very…teenagery. You know, preaching what I love(Even though what I love is good) and not really recognizing, leave alone appreciating, what others seem to like. When I was a child( I hate the tense) I had a open mind to everything. As long as it was fun, I didn’t care about anything else. Now, all this squirrel shit about whether others would approve eats my mind whenever I try to do anything that I love. I’m constantly in fear of being ridiculed, of being chided, off of my passion. I’m even more scared that I’ll give up my passion because of these fears, that I’ll somehow finally give in despite my confidence.

I used to show the little poems that I wrote to my parents proudly when I was little. Even though I knew deep down that it was as silly as sassyshit. But now I’m scared to show my 50,000 word long novel to them even though now I know deep down that it had shot to be big out somewhere. I’m scared that I’ll be told that it was silly, stupid and that I shouldn’t have wasted my time writing it when I could have been studying.

These fears are irrational and small when compared to my passion. Even though I deserved it, it did not. Writing is an art. An art I fell in love with. I shouldn’t be treating my soulmate this way, when there was no question about it, no doubts at all. I knew writing like I know me. I shouldn’t be ashamed of what I am and stop preaching the songs and movies that I love to every pair of eyes whose attention I’ve claimed.

It might be the hardest thing I’ve done yet but I should learn to accept and agree other people’s likes and dislikes and be proud of whatever I’m. Because that is where being mature really begins. Disliking only the crackers and not the persons who bursts it because they are just good at being who they are. I should be, too. Its a long road but I’ll get there.

Till then, Pooja’s just normal Pooja, a knowing teenager, trying to be adult, mourning her childhood.

Photo taken by (and used with permission from) my son Sevrin at his high school sailing team practice.

As I write this, there are seven teens asleep in my basement. My son and his friends came back from their high school dance in high spirits last night. Laughing and joking loudly, they boisterously descended on my kitchen, devouring everything within reach (even some chips that I thought I had hidden pretty well). These guys were the human equivalent of an invading colony of army ants, foraging insatiably through my refrigerator.

Now these boy-men are dead to the world, asleep in a puppy pile on my basement floor. And I have to be honest – I am loving every single thing about these teens. In fifteen plus years of parenthood, I have grown accustomed to – perhaps, in some ways, inured to – the many and diverse aspects of wonder in…

I don’t care if I am not a regular blogger.I don’t care that my mom is shouting her head off right now for surfing for so long. I am a blogger. I have my readers (who are very good ones , comparitively. better than me. Whoa!). . I am a perky writer,sometimes I write,sometimes I don’t. But my dear readers, you haven’t got rid of me just yet. I don’t care if I get a hundred likes or not, but what I do care is that some kind people continue to inspire and motivate me by following me to continue my pathetic writing and I do care that those people aren’t disappointed.

I will admit something in this blog : It would have been the happiest movement in my life if I had at least got 1 single like for my first sequel to the Zoras. I am not trying to be sympathetic or anything. It’s just that I am so obesessed with this publishing site. I have read some great writing works in my life before, and I know how a great one will look. The thing is, I didn’t think it was that bad that it didn’t even managed to get one like.( Don’t worry, I am not going to brood over the same thing to get you bored. This is just a catch-up article,topics will keep changing).

My friend says it should have been more detailed. Maybe.Maybe not. I don’t know and I don’t care anymore. The next time I experiment something like this, I’ll make sure its good.

Coming back, pals,don’t you guys think 2014 is running away from us? Every year feels the same whatsoever , but I feel our life’s pace had picked up.Do this , do that , this , that , this, that and poof! the day is over. I’m getting sick of it. That’s why I’ve taken word press to be my refuge. Listening to thousand years by Christina Perri from the movie Twilight and writing this ( I’ve died everyday waiting for you………. oh !!!! the song is very cool )

I somehow feel better . Old songs kinda perform the magic on us that nothing else can do, no?

I think I mentioned I was going through my mid-terms in my last post , well, believe me or not , it’s my second mid term now . And my friendship status with S , uh-uh, remains the same .I do care if she talks to me or not. It MATTERS to me. Don’t ask why. It just does. Thank god , I still maintain my Wordsmith nickname scoring 37 out of a possible 40.

Readers , would you please do me a awesome favor ?.( i think am going to replay the song ) Tell me , please , if there’s anything wrong with my posts or The Zoras. By that way I could improve , you know. Please comment if there’s anything pleasant but please ( double please ) comment if you have something oh-not-so-pleasant . I would love to hear from you ( wait. I think I copied it from somewhere . Never mind )

My mom’s gonna kill me if I am not shutting off the internet right now . So see ya later. Let me know if my post had spread a smile on your’s face , it would make my day. Bye !

The alarm rang earlier than usual that morning. There was a train to catch.

He boarded the train and took his place in the empty compartment. He was always early. He sat himself down at the window seat and opened up the day’s newspaper. A young man, dressed in a crisply ironed white shirt arrived soon after. Babu had noticed him on the platform. His stark white shirt standing out like a sore thumb against the dull, dusty, paan-stained train station. He sat down beside him, pulled out a folder and looked through it frantically. It was stuffed with documents, the ends of the folder bulging out uncomfortably, like a blouse that’s too tight. He pulled out a bunch of papers and put it on his lap, letting the folder breathe easier as he returned it to his briefcase. He checked his watch several times, shaking his right leg nervously…

2:45 am the clock said . Julie sat up , unable to sleep. She went over to the sofa and sat,pulling her legs towards her and buried her face in them. Since the morning , her stomach was lurching and she can tell something bad is about to happen. Four years ago , she experienced the same feeling , and after a few days her mom was dead. She was ten at that time. She sighed to her knees.

She got up and went over to the window. She scanned the lanes of Albert avenue absent mindedly searching for something that Would comfort her. Something that would tell her thatit’s alright . It’s just your imagination . she felt her free hair and tied it into a knot.

She saw the trees rustle violently in front of her. Her tummy did a back flip.She tightened her grip around the bars of the window so much that her knuckles became white. Like that would lessen her fear of something she didn’t know.Yet.

The trees shook more vigorously this time and she saw a hint of black moving behind the trees. An eerie darkness followed , darkness the likes of which she has never experienced before. Although it was dark the whole time.

Julie quickly grabbed the binoculars that her friend Mark had left behind in the table . Squinting through it, she saw a mass black figure gliding through the trees.

She moved an inch noiselessly to the right to get a closer, better view and gasped.

A black figure with a human body was finding support in a tree. Although Julie decided in the darkness that it is the most less human like figure she had seen in her whole life.

Death black colored skin , white eyebrows and lips with the most tantalizing green eyes was sitting on a tree branch supporting itself on it like a frog. Julie wanted to scream but no sound came out of her mouth. As she stared dumbfounded into the figure in front of her , a chill ran down her spine.

She dropped her line of vision and stared on to the ground. She simply could not resist looking at it anymore. She gulped as a pain stabbed every part of her body which had nothing to do whatsoever with the tiredness and sickness inside of her.

The pain hurt her in a mysterious ,nonchalant way. Julie could feel its eyes boring into her , the cause for her pain. She did not move or look at it. She simply stood there , not daring to move an inch of of her body. stay where you are a voice told her.

The pain was different from all the pains she had experienced before, but there was a strange wanting in her heart for the pain to stay, for it to stay.

For how long she stood there she did not know , but when it glided back into the trees , it seemed suddenly bright to her although it was dark all the time. A feeling of nostalgia surpassed Julie as she stared after the trees for a long time, dazed and shaken .